Eric Harroun

Eric Glenn Harroun (11 June 1982-8 April 2014) was a fighter of the Free Syrian Army during the Syrian Civil War.

Biography
Eric Glenn Harroun was born in Colorado Springs in the United States on 11 June 1982, and he converted to Islam after learning about the Middle East in 6th Grade. He suffered from mood swings, and when he joined the US Army and was wounded in a jeep crash, doctors had to insert a metal plate into his head, exacerbating his depression. In 2010 he visited Lebanon and he was arrested and held at gunpoint by Egyptian Army soldiers when aiding in the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo. In July of 2013, he entered Syria to fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War.

The Free Syrian Army was made up of many people such as Druze, Christians, and Shiites who wanted to be as free and prosperous as the United States. Harroun's main problem was the language barrier; he spoke only a little Arabic, so he did not know where to run, when, or where to fire back from. Whenever he fired his Dragunov Russian rifle, the scope fell off, so he had to steal ammunition from the Syrian Army. At times, he did not know if he was fighting for the democratic rebels or the extreme militia who wanted to massacre Shias.

He began a Facebook channel where he posted his experiences, and his video of seeing a downed helicopter led to the FBI investigating him. After six weeks, he headed to the American consulate in Istanbul in Turkey, where he was told that it was illegal for an American to fight in Syria. An FBI agent from Washington DC and an Assistant Prosecutor from the Eastern District of Virginia asked him to return to the USA, and when he returned, he was charged with providing materiel support to a terrorist organization. He was put in the Alexandria detention center in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day, and for three months he was not allowed to speak to others. For the first 110 days, he was not allowed to even go outside in a cage. Judge Ivan Davis threatened Harroun with the death penalty.

However, it was found out that the group that he belonged to was mistranslated and the government was forced to change the charge to a lesser one, "Use of an RPG". He was sentenced to time served and was given 3 years' probation. He was found dead in his home on 8 April 2014 with an unknown cause of death.